Of course, Thanksgiving is the perfect time of year to tell the people in our lives—both personal and professional—how much they mean to us. However, part of being a marketer is communicating thanks year-round, not just during the holiday season. Here are a few simple ways to show your gratitude no matter the time of year.

Autoresponders

You don’t have the resources to individually thank every single person who attends a webinar or downloads a white paper from your site. Fortunately, that’s what autoresponder emails and thank you pages are for.

Recently, I went on a downloading spree and requested dozens of white papers from various B2B companies in order to compare their thank you emails. A few came in the form of plain-text emails with impersonal copy and unclickable links. Some were created with beautiful HTML templates and linked to more content in the vein of the white paper I had requested. Most were somewhere in between.

If you’re at that in-between stage right now, you can up your game by making sure you’re sending customized autoresponders. For example, if a prospect downloads an eBook about social media best practices, you could send them a thank you email including links to infographics, blog posts, or videos about social media. Let me tell you, when I sorted through my inbox full of autoresponders, I definitely felt more appreciated when I opened tailored content instead of a generic email.

Social Media Thank Yous

Another great habit to get into is thanking people who share your content on social media, especially if they do it frequently. A recent case study on Buffer found that when a marketer thanked people for sharing his or her blog posts on Twitter, 26% of them clicked on that coveted ‘Follow’ button. That’s pretty impressive, but remember: it’s not really about you. Getting those new followers is a bonus, but letting people know you appreciate their contributions to the conversation is much more important. Just make sure you’re doing it right. I’ve seen far too many marketers say “Thx 4 RT.” An impersonal (and seemingly automated) message can be worse than no message at all.

Swag & Handwritten Notes

You know that glorious feeling you get when you open your mailbox and find an unexpected handwritten letter among the bills and junk mail? Why not give that feeling to someone else? Sending your clients personal holiday cards, thank you notes, or company swag is a simple but heartfelt way to show your gratitude.

There you have it: a few different ways to say thank you (and show that you truly mean it) with your marketing efforts. And finally, I would like to end this post with a limerick dedicated to all our clients, partners, employees, blog subscribers, families, and friends—because what better way to celebrate the holiday than with cheesy poetry, right?

Without all of you, we’d be nothing,
like a turkey without any stuffing.
Oh, what would we do
if we didn’t have you?
If we said we’d be fine, we’d be bluffing.